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Structural Segmentation of Music Using Set Accented Tones

An approach which efficiently segments Irish Traditional Music into its constituent structural segments is presented. The complexity of the segmentation process is greatly increased due to melodic variation existent within this music type. In order to deal with these variations, a novel method using ‘set accented tones’ is introduced. The premise is that these tones are less susceptible to variation than all other tones. Thus, the location of the accented tones is estimated and pitch information is extracted at these specific locations. Following this, a vector containing the pitch values is used to extract similar patterns using heuristics specific to Irish Traditional Music. The robustness of the approach is evaluated using a set of commercially available Irish Traditional recordings.